The federal government accused the operators of the container ship that brought down the Francis Scott Key Bridge of negligence and mismanagement, alleging that the Dali’s crew “jury-rigged their ship.”

The new claims provide the most detailed account yet of what led to the bridge’s total collapse early March 26. The Justice Department on Wednesday filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court of Maryland seeking to recoup $100 million in costs associated with recovery and cleanup, as well as punitive damages, from the Dali’s owner, Singapore-based Grace Ocean Private, and its manager, Synergy Marine Group.

The Dali included a rigged transformer that had been repeatedly cracking from excessive vibrations and a “recklessly disabled” backup circuit system, the government alleges. Recent inspections had found loose bolts, nuts and washers and broken electrical cable ties inside the transformers and switchboards.

The ship’s electrical equipment was so poor that one agency stopped electrical testing because of “safety concerns,” according to the government’s court filing.

The Justice Department alleges that the shortcomings were in part due to the operators’ desire to cut costs.

Grace Ocean and Synergy Marine have previously asked the court to exonerate them from or limit their liability, saying they are not at fault. The government in its response to that petition says those companies should not be limited from liability.

With a deadline looming next week to respond to the Dali operators’ petition to limit their liability, new legal claims are flowing in.

A criminal investigation is ongoing, officials said, as well as a National Transportation Safety Board inquiry. Certain members of the Dali crew, who hailed almost entirely from India, remain in Baltimore voluntarily to assist in the investigation, officials said.

“This was an entirely avoidable catastrophe, resulting from a series of eminently foreseeable errors made by the owner and operator of the DALI,” Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brian M. Boynton, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Division, said in a statement.

Darrell Wilson, a spokesperson for Grace Ocean and Synergy Marine, said the company anticipated Wednesday’s filing.

“The owner and manager will have no further comment on the merits of any claim at this time, but we do look forward to our day in court to set the record straight,” Wilson said.

The 984-foot-long container ship lost power multiple times after leaving the Port of Baltimore and slammed into a critical support pier of the Key Bridge. The bridge collapsed within seconds, plunging six men to their deaths. A seventh man was pulled from the water and survived.

The Dali experienced multiple power losses while docked in Baltimore, but did not report them to the Coast Guard as required by U.S. regulations, according to the court filing. And the Dali’s captain did not disclose the power losses, or the ship’s history of mechanical and electrical defects and other abnormalities to the Maryland pilot in charge of steering the ship out of Baltimore’s port and through the Chesapeake Bay.

While the Justice Department does not routinely seek punitive damages, Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General Benjamin C. Mizer said it was warranted in this case by the “egregious facts.”

“Out of negligence, mismanagement, and, at times, a desire to cut costs, they configured the ship’s electrical and mechanical systems in a way that prevented those systems from being able to quickly restore propulsion and steering after a power outage,” Mizer said.

In the new filing, federal authorities say four different means to help control the Dali in the event of an emergency broke down because of the ship’s poor condition, causing a “cascading series of failures.”

The night of the collapse, a Maryland-licensed pilot boarded the ship to guide it out of Baltimore’s Seagirt Marine Terminal and was assured by the captain that the ship was in good working order. As it approached the Key Bridge, the ship lost power when a transformer tripped open.

When the Dali’s power went out, the ship should have automatically transferred to a backup circuit system within a few seconds, restoring the ability to steer, according to the Department of Justice’s filing. But that didn’t happen because the automation feature had been “recklessly disabled,” and the ship’s engineers were left scrambling in the dark to reset the tripped circuit breakers.

The time it took to reset the breakers, about a minute, was critical, government lawyers wrote. At the time that was happening, the ship’s emergency generator should have kicked on automatically within 45 seconds as required by maritime regulations, but it took more than a minute for the emergency systems to power on, according to the court filing.

Investigators say the transformer and its breakers had “long suffered the effects of heavy vibrations, a well-known cause of transformer and electrical failure.”

“Instead of taking steps to eliminate the source of excessive vibrations, [the crew] jury-rigged their ship,” Justice Department lawyers wrote. “They retrofitted the transformer with anti-vibration braces, one of which had cracked over time, had been repaired with welds, and had cracked again. And they wedged a metal cargo hook between the transformer and a nearby steel beam, in a makeshift attempt to limit vibration.”

The ship’s previous chief officer had also reported that “constant vibrations” above the engine room were shaking lose the ship’s cargo lashings, which engineers noted was causing cracking of equipment in the engine room.

“Accordingly, it should have come as no surprise when the circuit breakers to the transformer tripped due to loose and damaged circuitry,” authorities alleged.

With impact with the bridge two minutes away, the Maryland pilot gave an emergency order for the Dali to release an anchor in hopes of pulling the vessel away from the bridge, authorities said.

But the Dali’s anchor was not ready for immediate release in an emergency, as required by law, and nothing happened, according to the court filing.

“By the time the ship finally dropped anchor, less than half a ship’s length from the bridge, it was too late to have any effect,” they wrote.

Even as the Dali’s engineers restored power after the first blackout, the ship did not have a working propeller because the main engine was still down. Had the engineers been able to restore the main engine, the ship’s pilot could have had time to slow down or steer, according to the court filing. Instead, a minute later, the Dali lost power a second time, again because of the company’s negligence, according to the Department of Justice.

The second power failure was caused because the wrong pump had been installed to fuel the diesel generators that make the ship’s electricity. Unlike a standard fuel pump, the ship was equipped with a “flushing” pump — something that is typically used temporarily for clearing out a pipeline when the crew switches between different types of fuel, according to the court filing.

It is not designed to recover automatically from a blackout, a “critical safety feature” that a proper fuel pump would have had, government lawyers said. With the flushing pump down, the ship’s engines couldn’t get enough fuel, causing the second blackout.

The government in court filings said Synergy, the company that managed the Dali, used the flushing pump “to save money.”

To restart the flushing pump after a blackout like the Dali experienced, an engineer would have to walk down 55 steps from the engine control room to the purifier room, and then press a start button, according to the court filing.

The NTSB has been investigating the Dali disaster separately from the Department of Justice for months. At a congressional hearing in the spring, NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy told lawmakers that the safety board was focused on issues with the ship’s electrical system.

In a report the safety board published last week it was revealed that inspectors found a loose electrical cable attached to the transformer that was in use when the Dali left port on March 26. Engineers from Hyundai, the ship’s manufacturer, told investigators the cable could cause a blackout if the connection severed. It’s not clear if that cable was shaken loose because of the ship’s vibrations; the NTSB report did not provide conclusions.

Justice Department officials said the $100 million claim seeks to recoup the costs of cleanup of the disaster, and that the state of Maryland as the owner and operator of the bridge could bring separate claims regarding the collapsed bridge.

“Our goal is to ensure that those responsible are required to answer for their negligence,” said Maryland U.S. Attorney Erek Barron. Taxpayers expect that the company “shoulder the burden of paying for the measures taken by a multitude of federal agencies to clean up the Fort McHenry Channel and reopen the Port of Baltimore.”

U.S. Senators Ben Cardin and Chris Van Hollen praised the Justice Department for seeking to hold the Dali’s owners accountable for the deaths of six men and the collapse of the bridge. Both Democrats pledged to put any money recovered by the Justice Department toward helping port workers and offsetting the cost accrued in getting the Port of Baltimore functioning quickly.

“As we continue working in Congress to guarantee full federal funding for replacing the Bridge, we must hold those responsible for this tragedy accountable,” Van Hollen said.

Baltimore Banner reporter Tim Prudente contributed to this article.

Join The Baltimore Banner at iMPACT MARYLAND on Oct. 1 for a discussion about the Key Bridge collapse and what comes next for Baltimore’s transportation infrastructure. Tickets are available today.